Nobody in baseball does more with less than the Tampa Bay Rays. That’s a storyline that will continue for 2014 and the foreseeable future beyond that.

With one of the smallest payrolls in baseball — $58 million in 2013, ranked 28th of MLB’s 30 teams — the Rays have come off their fourth post-season appearance in six years. For the third year in a row, they are casualties of the division round at the end of an entertaining series against the Boston Red Sox, whose payroll ($155 million) is almost triple what the Rays have to work with.

Principal owner Stuart Sternberg has already made it clear that this year’s attendance total, the worst in all of baseball, will affect how much money the team will spend on players in 2014. Given that national TV revenues will give every team an additional $25 million windfall next year, the Tampa Bay payroll won’t go down, but it certainly won’t increase enough to handle the demands of their current players.

GM Andrew Friedman, who should be named executive of the year every year — in fact, the award should be named after him — heads a front office and player development system that is the model every other franchise should aspire to. Their ability to keep the pipeline full of outstanding talent, especially young pitching, must confound their opponents, especially in October when they must grit their teeth as they watch their poor cousins from Tampa perform in the playoffs while their own more expensive chattels have gone off to Maui or Monte Carlo or wherever rich ball players go after another losing season.

At one point in their history, you could understand how Tampa was building such a strong farm system because of where they were drafting. But the last five or six years, they have been an upper-tier team, with drafting positions appropriate to their finishes in the standings. Yet they continue to grind out winning records.

As usual, they have many difficult issues to face this off-season, not least of which is what to do with David Price, the anchor of their pitching staff. Last year, they wrestled with the same problem regarding James Shields and traded him to Kansas City for a good haul of young talent, including the probable 2013 rookie of the year in Wil Myers.

Part of Tampa’s ability to regenerate so consistently is because of players such as Price, who is already making $10 million, but is two years away from free agency. He is at the peak of his trade value right now and the potential gains he will make through arbitration are not going to faze any of the rich clubs because most of them are already paying more than that to pitchers of lesser talent.

It will be a sad day for the Rays when they say goodbye to Price, but they already have the nucleus of a fine pitching staff with Alex Cobb, Matt Moore, Chris Archer, Jake Odorizzi and even Jeremy Hellickson, whose struggles were plastered all over the telecast of Tampa’s last loss of the season.

The haul they get for Price will only help fertilize the next crop.

As for the rest of the team, there are upward of a dozen free agents, including players who were instrumental in getting the Rays to the playoffs this year. That includes first baseman James Loney, closer Fernando Rodney, catcher Jose Molina and late season pickup Delmon Young.

Second baseman Ben Zobrist and shortstop Yunel Escobar have team-friendly options of $7 million and $5 million, respectively, so they’re not going anywhere. David DeJesus may have delivered enough to earn his $6.5 million option.

How much longer the Tampa ownership can keep the franchise alive in that market is tough to say. They have delivered good baseball teams and when they get into playoff situations, fans do show up, but the economic base is so shaky that they can’t seem to draw over 162 games.

Baseball is loathe to allow teams to move, but this is one franchise that might eventually get an exemption because it has tried so hard and delivered so much quality baseball.

There aren’t many markets where it could move. Charlotte, maybe. But what about Montreal? It’s probably unrealistic, but if they could bring that old plan for a downtown stadium out of mothballs, how cool would it be to have an American League East division with Toronto, Montreal, New York, Boston and Baltimore?

It’s probably a pipe dream, but the Rays are eventually going elsewhere, so why not?

RED SOX MULL PITCHING OPTIONS

One of the benefits of getting an early finish in the American League Division Series for the Boston Red Sox is they get to set their pitching up any way they want.

The only one of John Farrell’s starting pitchers who wouldn’t be working on full rest in Games 1 and 2 would be his fourth starter, Jake Peavy.

Farrell said Wednesday he would “probably go with Jon Lester” in Game 1 on Saturday, but after that, John Lackey and Clay Buchholz are both in play for Game 2.

Lester was superb in his opening start against Tampa in the ALDS, allowing only three hits, including a couple of solo homers in 7.2 innings of a game the Red Sox won 12-2.

Lackey’s home-road splits (2.47 ERA at home, 4.48 away) played into his start in Game 2 of the ALDS, but if Oakland makes it into the LCS, Lackey has a superb record in 18 career starts at the Oakland Coliseum.

“We’ll probably take a look at all things once (the opponent) is determined,” Farrell said.

“We’ve got another day or so to figure out who it’s going to be, either Oakland or Detroit.”

That will be determined Thursday night when those two teams meet in Oakland in the deciding game.

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Big changes to plucky Tampa Bay Rays

Nobody in baseball does more with less than the Tampa Bay Rays. That’s a storyline that will continue for 2014 and the foreseeable future beyond that.

With one of the smallest payrolls in baseball — $58 million in 2013, ranked 28th of MLB’s 30 teams — the Rays have come off their fourth post-season appearance in six years. For the third year in a row, they are casualties of the division round at the end of an entertaining series against the Boston Red Sox, whose payroll ($155 million) is almost triple what the Rays have to work with.

Principal owner Stuart Sternberg has already made it clear that this year’s attendance total, the worst in all of baseball, will affect how much money the team will spend on players in 2014. Given that national TV revenues will give every team an additional $25 million windfall next year, the Tampa Bay payroll won’t go down, but it certainly won’t increase enough to handle the demands of their current players.